From “Hipster to Hermès”—Alexander Stutterheim Launches a New Line, John Sterner, That Is Meant to Better the World and Keep You Warm

Alexander Stutterheim describes himself as an introvert and a perfectionist. He’s also an active idealist who hopes to make the world a better place with his new brand, John Sterner. If Stutterheim’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you know his handworked rubber raincoats, beloved by the likes of Jay Z and Kanye, which are now sold in over 1000 global outlets.

Though Stutterheim grew up with an awareness of fashion—his mother owns a small boutique and always underscored, he says, “how important it was to be well dressed and clean”—this Swede’s entrée into the industry was by happenstance rather than design. Born in Sweden near the island of Öland, Stutterheim moved to Stockholm to study psychology and Swedish, after which he landed a job copywriting for Saab. It “isn’t existing anymore, so I guess I wasn’t that good a copywriter,” he jokes. A new path opened when Stutterheim found his grandfather’s rubber mac hanging on a nail in a barn. “I tried it on and I remembered him,” the designer said, and set out to buy one for himself. The market, he discovered, was glutted with Gore-Tex. “I had a Gore-Tex jacket and I felt like a golfer lost in town, basically. And that wasn’t on my aesthetic brand, so I identified that I ought to give myself like an antidepressant winter-hobby project. You know it’s very dark and cold in Sweden, and we are rather good at innovation because we need to do something so we will not fall into depression.”

About two years ago, having founded the Most Melancholic Person of the Year award, and taken to sticking poems about rain inside the pockets of his coats, Stutterheim felt he had done what he set out to do with the brand. “I still love [it], but the passion was perhaps a bit down,” he explains. Having done hipster, the designer decided to “do Hermès,” by which he means to create exclusive, luxury products. The new brand, named John Sterner after Stutterheim’s grandfather, will be one of the first in this category in Sweden, a nation best known for its mass- and mid-range fashions.

“I always try to do things opposite of others and question,” explains Stutterheim. “For me, to justify another brand in this world it must have something else than really good designed sweaters and this sell, sell, sell mentality.” He continues: “I was always interested in exploring what a brand can be in this society. Is it always all about selling (hopefully) well-designed products, or could a brand actually communicate something more? Could a brand have values to do something for the society, to do something for another person? Can we work against mass production and this throwaway society we live in? Is there a place for a brand that could challenge the industry, in a way? Also the consumers, and myself?” Eco-consciousness has been part of his thinking from the beginning, as has helping people. Recognizing that it can be difficult for the refugees flooding into Sweden to integrate, Stutterheim has founded a collective of refugee knitters, each of whom will sign the pieces she creates.

John Sterner sweaters, like Stutterheim’s beloved raincoats, reference his grandfather, specifically the turtlenecks he wore while fishing. At present, the small brand can produce a hundred of these heavy-knit models a month. Down the line there will be medium- and lightweight knits, the last in cashmere from Loro Piana. Based on iconic silhouettes, these sweaters are old-school, but then again not. Stutterheim has adjusted the fit to satisfy people more likely to order fish at a happening restaurant than catch it themselves, and he’s developing an app that lets customers track his herd, allowing them to follow the sheep as their wool is sheared, dyed, and knitted. Each sweater will be a numbered piece and come marked with a yellow plastic ear tag, the same kind that sheep wear. Stutterheim is also at work on a cabin in Öland, which will be built along the lines of his own white-trimmed red one, where, he says, customers “can come and stay one night and meet me.”

“Perhaps it’s too much to do all this at once,” Stutterheim muses, “but I need to try. This is why I have the tag line Swedish Knitology, because I want this to be a poetic brand. These will be sweaters for life.”

The first sweaters go on sale today: Customers can pick them up at his apartment in Stockholm's fairy-tale-like Old Town, and stay for a fika (coffee). For more information, email contact@johnsterner.com